It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Scott Rice
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, Scott Rice
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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
The Best (?) from the Bulwer-Lytton Contest: 101 Funniest Opening Sentences from the Worst Novels Never Written

Author: Scott Rice

Narrator: various narrators, Marni Webb, Bob Nathan, Ray Nakamoto, Rachel Songer

Unabridged: 1 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/01/1997

Synopsis

Little did the obscure novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton know in 1830 when he penned that most relished, imitated, and lampooned opening sentence in English literature, "It was a dark and stormy night..." that his words would inspire countless aspiring writers struggling incessantly like boats against the current to emulate his unparalleled style and that his name would grace "The Bulwer-Lytton Contest" honoring his most successful followers. Get it? Abounding in shameless sentences, this audio rendition of the original contest is a hilarious—even perversely instructive—collection of skilled, inept writing.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog on February 16, 2020

The book A Dark and Stormy night is the first collection, or maybe the fourth, I am not sure which, as compiled by Scott Rice of the best of the entries into the famous annual Bulwer-Lytton contest named for the man who first penned the sentence “It was a Dark and stormy night” and not, according to......more

Goodreads review by Fishface on February 06, 2016

Winners of the international contest to see who can write the most contorted, wordy, hard-to-follow, yet grammatical first sentence of a non-existent novel, in the style of Dickens's old friend. Bulwer-Lytton would be so proud. Or maybe not.......more

Goodreads review by Sara on January 12, 2008

An absolute corker of a book. I have literally been rolling about laughing at some of the 'openings' this books contains. The books premise started out as a competition. To compile 'The Very Worst Opening Lines in Fiction'. Everyday people were asked to write in, their own ideas, of the worst opening......more

Goodreads review by Robert on January 25, 2008

Scott Rice, ed., It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Best of the Bulwer-Lytton Contest (Penguin, 1984) It seems like a can't-miss idea, right? Publish the thousand or so best of the myriad entries the Bulwer-Lytton contest got in 1984. And, really, there's a lot of funny stuff here. But two hundred p......more

Goodreads review by Sue on January 02, 2016

A bacchanal of badly-baked banalities; artistically atrocious in its awesomeness.......more

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